Yesterday, as we're driving back on highway 85 from a weekend in San Diego, my wife and I pass the state prison at Buckeye. And I'm grateful I'm driving, and not behind those fences.
The dark boxy structures remind of the 16 years I spent in California institutions. Behind those fences was an alien world of negative values, of gloom, of depression.
And I wondered how many at this prison we passed today were like I was. Because I blamed everybody and everything for my arrests. For my addictions.
Poor me. I was a victim of the system. No one understood. But I didn't even understand myself.
Deep down I had no sense of responsibility for my dilemma. It was my abusive childhood. The cops had it in for me. My excuses went on and an, fueled by a simmering anger.
The epiphany came when I had enough pain. Pain made me look inside myself, made me seek help.
And that help came in the form of a stay in a detox - then a year in a halfway house.
No longer was the world responsible for my heroin use and alcoholism. For my lack of success.
And an interesting part of that change is that I quit getting arrested. Stayed out of jail. Started accumulating things.
I joined the human race and stayed out of prison.
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